


Sad Tidings

by Sangerin



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 13:53:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8330317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: It seemed that Xander never spoke to Andrew these days without the news being bad.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Post-"Chosen", post-"You're Welcome"
> 
> Originally posted April 2005.

Xander flipped his phone closed. It was getting to the point that he never wanted to get another call from Andrew again. Didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to speak to him. That boy was the bearer of bad tidings along with his Spike-fixation and aggravating attempts to ape Sherlock Holmes. But it seemed that Xander never spoke to Andrew these days without the news being bad. Andrew had given him the news of Anya’s death, and now he had told him that Cordelia, too, had died.

She’d died without ever waking up - not that anyone had thought to tell Xander that Cordelia was in a coma in the first place. Xander hated the world and everyone in it, and particularly every one who had ever left him. And bypassing Andrew, Xander swallowed his hatred and telephoned Angel.

It turned out that Cordelia had been living quite a life there in Los Angeles: possessed by some sort of demonic force one year, living on a higher plane of existence the year before that. She’d always had all the fun. When Angel mentioned ‘pregnancies’, Xander tuned out. He ignored the strain in Angel’s voice, too. Not his business if Vampire-boy was taking this loss hard. This phone call was supposed to be all about Xander’s grief. So he hung up. 

He tried to remember the way Cordelia had looked at the Prom. Or the way she’d looked, mud-covered and exhausted, coming into the Homecoming Dance along with Buffy - and hadn’t that given him something to fantasise about for many, many nights. He even tried to remember the way she’d looked after they’d broken up: dressed to maim and kill in a brown leather suit that left every boy at Sunnydale High trying to find waist-high objects to hide behind.

Instead, he could only think of her in the way he’d seen her in what had been, notwithstanding every horrific moment of his life since first encountering Buffy Anne Summers, the worst moment of his life. Crumpled on the ground, having fallen through the rotting stairs and the rotting floor, with a chunk of wood protruding from her stomach, having forced its way through from the other side. A stake. Yes, fate had a sense of humour. Or not.

Xander cried that night. He sat by the fire under the wide African sky and mourned the loss of yet another person he loved. And his heart grew just a little colder.


End file.
